Equifax Data Breach Could Be Largest in US History

143 million customers potentially at risk.

By Jonathon Dornbush

Equifax, a consumer credit reporting agency, has revealed that hackers breached the company's data, putting potentially millions of users' sensitive information at risk.

The New York Times reports that information of possibly 143 million Americans, including Social Security and driver's license numbers, may have been compromised in the hack, affecting a third of the country's population in what may be one of the nation's largest data breaches ever. The Times states that hackers would also have access to basic information like names, birthdays, and home addresses, while a reported 209,000 Equifax customers had their credit card numbers stolen.

Equifax, which confirmed the data breach in a message to investors, has been hit by cybersecurity issues twice previously since 2015.

This is clearly a disappointing event for our company, and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do."

"This is clearly a disappointing event for our company, and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do. I apologize to consumers and our business customers for the concern and frustration this causes," Equifax Chairman and CEO Richard F. Smith said in a statement. "We pride ourselves on being a leader in managing and protecting data, and we are conducting a thorough review of our overall security operations."

Hackers reportedly broke into Equifax's systems between May and July of this year, with the company having discovered the breach on July 29. According to The new York Times, there has since been no "unauthorized activity on its main consumer or commercial credit reporting databases."

The company is currently hosting a page to allow users to determine whether their information may be at risk, though, according to Mashable, Equifax plans to "send direct mail notices to consumers whose credit card numbers or dispute documents with personal identifying information were impacted."

Equifax, based in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of three credit reporting agencies in the US, including TransUnion and Experian as well. The company deals with the data of 820 million consumers and 91 million businesses.

Comparatively, six million Instagram accounts were reportedly hacked last week, while the PSN outage of 2011, which left the service down for an entire month, reportedly cost Sony $171 million.

Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

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